


Zaklinaniya

by GloriaMundi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Community: trope_bingo, Gen, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 05:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5080285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He'll feel safe," was how Natasha sold it to Steve in the end. "Feel <i>you're</i> safe. If he knows you can take him down with a single word."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Zaklinaniya

Steve looked around. He couldn't see anyone he knew (wasn't sure who he expected to see). There were a bunch of guys -- wait, one of 'em was a dame, maybe two -- and they had no faces. Like, blank grey skin between their big beetle-black eyes and the _teeth_ , oh fuck, the teeth. Their skin was mottled, scaly. They were talking, shouting, at him, but their words were all hiss and spit and click and he didn't know what they -- They were closing in on him and his shield, he didn't have --

* 

"He'll feel safe," was how Natasha sold it to Steve in the end. "Feel _you're_ safe. If he knows you can take him down with a single word." 

"It's not right," protested Steve. "He's not a, a machine! A computer!" 

"No, he's not, and you both know it," said Natasha. "Steve. We all have words that affect us more than they should. His are just more ... " 

"Programmed?" said Steve. "The programming's all gone. He's ..." 

Bucky wasn't okay, that was the thing. Might never be okay again. Steve wasn't sure _he'd_ ever be okay again either. Not with what they'd done to Bucky. "I made it out the other side," said Bucky. "Ain't that better than the alternative?" "Of course it is," said Steve. Sure, lots of people had been through hell. Some of them came through it. Steve didn't know anyone else who'd lived \-- existed -- through seventy years of torture and bloodshed.

So, Natasha taught him the words, one by one. Some of them were simply supposed to distract Bucky from whatever Hydra-fuelled behaviour he was enacting. Other words would knock him out for anything from thirty seconds to a day. Steve learnt the word ("nepodvizhnost") that'd paralyse every non-autonomous muscle movement in Bucky's body, and vowed to himself that he'd never use it. 

"There's no use my telling you the word that'll kill him, is there?" 

"Nope." 

"Not even if --" 

"I'd rather die than kill him, Natasha." 

"What about other people, Steve? Civilians? Little children?" Natasha's eyes were wide, her expression innocently curious. "Peggy?"

"Sometimes I don't like you very much," Steve told her: but he learnt the word, practiced it in the safety of Natasha's room until he had the inflection down pat. 

*

The distraction words were fine. Steve had to use one when Bucky went into some kind of fugue state right in the middle of Prospect Park. There was a little girl with red plaits done up in pink ribbons, wearing a pink tutu and stripy purple and white leggings. Bucky wouldn't stop staring at her, following her, until Steve grabbed his shoulder and leant in and said "Bereginya". Bucky stopped, sneezed, and looked hard at Steve, who went red up to his ears and swallowed hard. "Thanks, pal," said Bucky. And that was it. 

After that it was only a matter of time before Bucky -- who'd never been stupid -- asked about the commands. (He called them 'zaklinaniya'. "Means spells. Like, magic or something.") "I swear I'll never use 'em unless I gotta, Buck." 

"Bet you don't even know what half of 'em do," said Bucky mildly. 

"Only what Natasha told me," admitted Steve. "I mean -- she _said_ she was sure, but \--" 

They spent a couple of hours trying to work them out. Steve would say the last syllable, then the first: with a couple he'd write them down phonetically. Bucky seemed unaffected at first, but he grew quieter as Steve went down his mental list. (Advantage of the serum: perfect eidetic memory. He wasn't stupid enough to write the words down anywhere, but he could recall them in the exact same order Natasha'd taught them to him, which, coincidentally -- as if there were ever coincidences when Natasha Romanoff was involved -- were in ascending order of severity.) 

"We don't have to do them all tonight," said Steve when Bucky started knuckling the bridge of his nose. "Or ever." 

Good to know," said Bucky, "because my brains are gonna leak out my ears if we do much more." 

"I thought if we didn't speak the whole --" 

"I keep thinkin' 'bout how they'd sound," said Bucky. He sounded exhausted. "But yeah, they're all pretty safe so far. Couple of hours unconsciousness, maybe." 

"Wish I could tell you the words to take _me_ down," said Steve, utterly sincere. "It ain't fair." 

"Life ain't fair, Stevie," said Bucky fondly. "Or did you forget that while I was out of the picture?" 

* 

The grey things weren't human. They were closing in on him. He didn't have his shield, didn't know where the hell he was, couldn't even remember who his backup was, fuck, he was going to \-- 

"Stevie," said a voice right up close in his ear. 

He knew that voice. It was -- it was -- 

"It's me. It's Bucky. Love you, Stevie. C'mon, come back. Shake it off." Then, again, "Stevie." 

Steve discovered that he was on the ground -- on concrete, broken concrete -- hunched up like a little kid, rocking to and fro, and someone was -- _Bucky_ was -- holding him tight and whispering in his ear. The rest of the team -- hey, where'd the grey guys get to? -- the rest of the team, Sam and Natasha, and Wanda looking miserable -- "I couldn't stop her, Captain Rogers," she said, gesturing at the Asgardian woman who was slumped against the basement wall ...

"Stevie," said Bucky. "'Sokay. We got you back." 

" _You_ got me back," managed Steve, because it was important that Bucky knew what he'd done. Knew that he had power too. "Zaklinaniya." 

"Told you, Rogers," said Natasha, smug and fond. "We all have 'em." 


End file.
